Five Casseroles

hi this is vaughn at uh westcott bell pottery in uh in nova scotia canada i'm going to do a video today on casseroles um i've done it before it'll be a little twist because i've got two cameras set up uh i'm actually going to pack trying to build up inventory to build and pack a gas scale firing so i'm just showing you these because i've done an assortment of shapes sizes so when you're planning your studio day it's good to know when you can fire your kiln if you can fill it and what you need to fill it so i have all of these pieces made at the moment um plates large bowls chip and dips so i've got plenty of big pieces but i'm still going to do five more big pieces because i have a 24 cubic foot kiln out there so um so basically i need to fill it so i'll probably have to do a few more small pieces after today maybe throw those either late today uh or tomorrow morning but i'm you know i'm trying to you know assess my inventory um you know so that uh i can get that kiln packed efficiently so there's no tiny spaces and you're left with you know where there could be something um but uh here you go that's my uh little intro okay let's get let's do this all right this is uh the casserole baking dish bean pot um i always put in my bats like this so that i don't do it at the sink and then i don't block all this clay up in my sink pipes there we go so i am using six and a half seven pounds of clay angle in the center you set off a helping hand by rounding it a bit all right so then i'm gonna force it down a bit more just to kind of make sure we're adhered to the wheel and then i'm gonna cone it just so that i can make sure we don't have any lumps of clay or air bubbles that i can feel in there sorry about the bat banging the pins on my old wheel here this is a brand wheel it's probably four 35 years old when did i buy this in the late 80s i think so we're forcing it down from phoning so that it basically gains a little bit more workability making sure there's no air bubbles that i can feel or looks like it doesn't put me off without the knocking i know a lot of people get put off completely with that and the back probably is a little warped i suppose anyway now push down my elbow is locked into the wall here so that i can actually not be forced to give way a little bit with my left hand i've talked about that before it just added support that you can rest on besides the splash pad itself i'm only leaving about a centimeter of clay at the bottom and i'm working across the bottom a couple of times to compress the clay there what is all that flat middle fingers does help and then basically wet the rim so it dribbles down outside it and inside and then do a quick pull with your knuckle on the outside to kind of push the wall up but you have to do quick because it drags the water off the pot so quickly but it will just cone it a little bit narrow it with that weight of your knuckle then the same dribble water all the way down and you can use a sponge in your hand if you want to at this point and press just the other side of the sponge so you can dribble a little bit of water on as you're doing the pull here see that little knocking thing it doesn't it will put a lot of people off so if you have bats that do that you have to decide whether to throw them out or keep them i guess hello can i help you uh it's across the street there's some customers now the same again i'm going to do another pull and the sponge is just pushing a little bit of water on the piece ahead so that i've always got it wet and don't go too thin when you're doing a baking dish and i don't open it up too much at the top either and i'm leaving a really thick piece of clay at the top so i can get the shelf plus the wall that holds the lid in dribble again this time i'm going to use the metal rib to push against a nice strong form of a curve so it doesn't hang out too much i don't need to add more water at this point i need to get it off because we've got a piece that's fairly decent the wall is very even so i'm dragging the water off by pressing against the edge of the metal rib and then here i'm going to try and throw a little bit more height leaving that thickness because i want to get basically a shelf and a wall out of that lumber plate there take a look at your form you can basically open up a little bit higher now because you've just got some extra height so i'm changing the curve a little bit there you go throwing with a camera video is like having a mirror there you can see what you're doing there you go so the last bit i have to do is the little lip so i'm going to wet the top and wet underneath pull up that wall that's where i'm gonna get my thing and i'm hoping i've got my size right put the needle just to score and start opening it up a touch that doesn't drag on the pot at all and then this little wooden rib here i dribble water in before i push it down so you've got a nice bit of lubrication there and then you kind of pull it over and it actually flattens that little trying to do it so you can see what i'm doing here okay so we have a shelf it's quite a deep shelf i could probably cut that down in trimming to make it a bit more of a bigger opening even then i'm pulling across to open up the wall a little bit now i'm going to get the water out because we don't want it to soften down anymore so i'm going to try to start at the top and pull a little sponge lightly against the inside all the way to the bottom to dribble out all that water it's a good handful of water there so i compress the base at the beginning i'm just drying the wall out now it's nice and even get the water off here too everything that's there is whoops there goes my sponge for a ride and then we have to see how close we were to what i was aiming for oh please oh please please no no it's too small um and i can make a lid to fit that but i was trying to get them all the same size but let's see if i can just open that up a touch perfect it's nice if all the lids that i'm going to throw today are all the same size so that i won't have to keep track of them in the damp cupboard and then i'm just going to define the edge of that a little bit more just lost a piece of clay but i just gained it back again just a little bit there and this i'm just going to try and flatten it just to touch more that shelf is a little wide i think i might trim a bit off when i'm when i'm trimming i don't need a big shelf like that and then let's see if i can compress this is my freddy tool thank you freddie just this is a groggy clay a little bit of gruggy place i'm just going to round off the rim a little bit there a leather would work but basically that tool does the job make sure there's no water dribbling down because some clays if you get a little extra water just in like dribble they're going down they'll split right at that point because they absorb that moisture that is one heck of a bean pot okay i hope you've got eight people coming to dinner all right so we know it's the right size we just measured it perfect take that off there's another bat the lid is the easy bit okay nice and moist one and a half pounds for the lid just have to breathe on it to center it when it's only this small it only took 45 seven whatever years to get to this point it's just repetition and i think i'd rather be doing this than going fishing a lot of people it's the bumper sticker that says i'd rather be fishing i love doing this i have a lot of people recently wanting to do classes but i just can't encode it so [Music] but there is a going to be a lot of people getting into clay i think in the next five years now i want a nice dome not a flat lid on this so there you go i'm going to measure it now i think i'm a bit small that's the opening so this is the little i'm not sure what they call these calipers oh look at this i'm perfect straight off and that was i was thinking that was small so i probably would have made that too big but anyway i got a nice thick piece of clay there for the edge of the lid and that's good because it won't chip easily double check this just to make sure that was the inside of the thing yeah it is exactly the right size okay so that's your beginning of the casseroles now i've recorded this video i've got um four of these made already so i've made four separate videos so i'll be editing and cropping and stuff you'll see let me know what you think of the video so my first time using this ipad i've got a second ipad here you see so let's see how well i can do the editing maybe it won't get published for a year anyway you go you can see it and then you've got it right there so i am going to pull handles for my uh large jaws i've already got a lot of handles pulled so i'm just going to show you how i do this let's see if i can get you a bit closer you don't need to see me you need to see the hands okay so when you're pulling handles you've got to think of proportion and your knuckle in your thumb has bulge out and then of course your you've got little marks in your finger will determine what your handles look like so you need to use a lot of water and i rotate the handle every three or four pulls because i'm trying to keep it even on both sides but i also want it thicker at the bottom and the top these are the side handles i'm going to put knobs on my lids for the casseroles and you simply just rotate it backwards and forwards keeping it really lubricated but not going off the end so you leave a thicker area there so that's where it will join onto the jaw i just want them fairly even you've got that kind of shape there you can see as the light catches it so it's thicker at the edges all right and then when you think you got it long enough which that is adequate i think it needs to be up a little bit higher there you then snap it off and you have a little strap handle so i have pulled a lot of handles for my mugs there i've got a bunch of mugs just with the wiggly mugs i'm doing a video on too and i got all my strap handles here for the jaws okay it is actually time to put the handles on it's about 2 30 in the afternoon i've been waiting all day for these pieces to dry up a bit because it's been so humid so um i showed you my handles but let's give you a quick look again i've done two of them already those are the big strap handles looks like this there you go and try and get you as close as possible without hitting the pot all right so what i do with my handles is i cut them even so that they're going to be as even as possible on the piece now knowing that they are even i put them down and i can you see that i'm gonna have to get you over a little bit closer a little bit further down here i'm going to put a thumb mark right in the edge of the handle there press it down and do another one right there another one over here so we've got that strap handle ready to go so let's do the other one see if i can get the other one so you can see that worked out pretty good i think can you see that one okay so same again i'm going to try and keep it even the power just went out it's actually a very stormy gray day and we've been threatened with thunderstorms so we just lost power so what a great time to put handles on except for i hope you can still see all right so good job i'm not firing a kiln today okay so here's the pot so there's a couple ways of doing this i've got my strap handle straight so i can put it on the piece like that and these pieces are really tacky um but if you are unsure about it it's a good idea now i've just done that is to wet it i don't think i need to but just to give yourself some slip you're still seeing this okay and then place your handle now the lineup goes around is one of the reasons i put that there is so i can do this and now without getting my thumb in the way of the camera i push down push down and then do another one in the center there and then over here i do the same thing i actually have another casserole video i have to stand up the angle of this trying not to go over that line too much there and you've got that handle it's maybe just lifting up a bit on that side and then you want to get these even so i turn it around and look right across from the top and position the other handle and my right eye tends to always make things a little off so i'm trying to compensate for that but that's where i think it needs to go so let's hope i'm thinking good and then we press the same thing in same again over here do okay so we've got that position you see the two of them there it's a bit odd at the angle that we're at and then i sponge it with a brush i should say not sponge it huh and the power came on again and then i like it to be up a bit so i'm going to get my brush underneath the handle but i'm putting my finger i can shoot you to that just to show you i'm trying to stop the bro the handle from literally being pushed up above that line that's in the pot but i'm trying to push the bottom part of it up a bit to form a bit of a curve so you can get your fingers when you've got your fingers inside an oven mitt obviously that's a little bit thicker so i think you need to have this handle pushed up a bit so my finger is just stopping the top part of the handle from getting moved above that line it'll still go up a touch but this is a good way of stopping it so you i've got like a decent inch there that's hanging out two and a half centimeters so that'll give that person with the oven gloves plenty of maneuvering room same here i'm going to wet my finger this time so they don't stick too much the brush goes under the handle not pushing against the pot and pushing against the handle so that i've lifted it up i'm going to look to see symmetrically how they're doing actually it's not bad and the steps for the second type of handle are identical when i until i after i put my thumb prints on so we just use this type of handle all over again which i just showed you how to make uh and this time i place the handle let's see if we can get you so you can see this a little easier okay there and then i put my finger in the middle and pull this down like that and try to get the same angle down here too so we've got a curve and then tack it wet your thumb put your hand inside opposite and then you do the same smoothing pressing from behind and in front and this piece is quite soft so i don't need to add the water as i did in the other piece i did that just to show you you should do it if you're in any doubt basically but if you join things when the clay is like i just pulled these handles and i could pull handles with the clay that pots made of at the moment it's that soft it's it's a lot firmer than it was when i threw it obviously well it must be summer because they're out playing on their bikes there you go so that i should probably show you there's the uh whoops there you go those are the different ones i've already done i've still got one to go okay now the lids have to be trimmed they're still soft so it's a it's before i would normally trim but i have to do it because i'm going to be taking and putting a knob off at the knob on them at the same time this is when some of my bigger trimming tools come in handy you don't use these very often but let me get some power first now that we have power again so i'm just taking off to round off the lid it's very sticky so it's sticking to the pot which is why you don't like to trim at this stage although your tools would last a long longer if you did so we're just rounding down that lid get off there okay so we've got a rounded edge now i'm going to put a knob on there and the more the chance that it's actually going that's these are so sticky that they're going to stick to the wheel again and barely lift them up without bending them i put these sponges underneath a c4 that's a little bit too shallow so i'm going to stick this under there as well maybe two of these under here that's what i have all these things on my wheel to that i use they come in handy that should be tall enough now to stop the yeah it's just resting a little bit on there so that will mean when i'm throwing on top of this very soft form it's not going to collapse in but i can't tighten this very much either otherwise it will actually dent the edge as well so because i'm going to be throwing on this piece i just take a little water and whip it i have a tiny little knob here all clay which i place on there and just kind of it's like throwing a pot on top of a piece of clay but so this i'm making sure it's sealed before i start throwing it and then wet your fingertips and center the smallest piece of play you've ever centered see the baby's eagles still i wonder how loud that's appearing in my videos the crows are worse but that baby seagull just sits next to his mother and says feed me at some point the mother says feed yourself and that's very sad time for that seagull okay now you can decide what kind of knob you want you can do that style knob which is the easy enough to lift up now that's not too bad or you can take it down like totally center this see how nice that sponge holds this up so it doesn't cave in when i put all that pressure on there it's like wild america outside that wild north america now i'm just going to throw this into a little mini hole so not too thin you don't want it to fall off easily either but you want it big enough and strong enough so that somebody can lift that lid up sit this down here that waterfall is going to fall away let's use one of my other sponges oh no it isn't the raccoon i think my raccoon came back he's gonna be the main reason people watch my videos of it in the end i think listen to that seagull [Music] okay so we have a lid okay now i just turned the lids upside down the right way up onto my jaws i'm going to do some carving on the top before i start to do any trimming so let's give you a little my cats in the background there i fed the one and the others looking up very eagerly wanting some two which you can get okay so there you go let's get you in close so i just turned these lids the right way up i showed you how to throw the knobs on top of them and i've got to trim a little bit on the lid but i'll be showing you that in a minute so before i do that um i've got to do a little carving so a little decorative element let's see if you can see this and i should probably turn it so you can see me doing this i like to make the glaze run into the channel so it breaks on the high points this is a very quick decorative technique and that's why i do that shoulder edge there so that it stops abruptly instead of kind of wandering up and down it instantly just stops at that level and the next part is i do a little trimming so let's take you over to do that okay so now i'm going to trim that uh piece and also uh do some more carving on it so let's get you so you can see what's going to happen down here so i lift the lid off i've wired it through so i can actually lift it up now take my giving grip out as wide as it will go hopefully this is not too wide for this looking pretty good and we've got to be careful not to dent it because if these arms will leave a mark this clay is not really leather hard yet it's pretty centered but that's why i'm difficult okay so i've tightened it up a little bit but it's not totally tight so i've got to be a little careful here so i'm just taking off some of the excess clay at the first see how sticky it is because it's not quite that hard yet trimmings fly and just don't stick if it's leather odd with this i'm trying to do a little bit of the trimming clean you know speed the drying up a little bit get some of this wet clay off now it's leather hard down there but up here it's still sticky that's the bit that is the thickest so that's that's expected [Music] this is an old trimming kind of handle making tool there's no name on it but that's what it looks like [Music] and it's worn out quite a bit so it means it's got a really thin piece of wire there which is great you don't have to put any pressure on practically when you're trimming with this because it just cuts through very quickly there you always speed it up so the trimmings will fly off okay i'm not going to turn the foot on there yet that'll be tomorrow okay so now i've actually put the piece back the right way up i can put the lid on which has not been played with yet um so it's pretty centered straight away i could probably check that knob there it's probably just to touch off there so let's pull it this way it's the knob that i dented a little bit when i was working on it so i want to clean that up i caught it with my finger as i was turning it the other way up that got rid of that mistake isn't that nice with clay you can just get rid of mistakes take a bit off and then i had to clean up the look of the piece give that little knob area there a little sharp edge where it comes out because you can get your finger under there a little easier then as well and then using this other tool again we can thin the lid a bit it's actually fairly heavy as a lid but i want to carve into it so that's why i left it fairly heavy oh these trimming tools once they get so thin like this they're beautiful and then snap go gone because it's just a tiny guitar string practically at this point but while it lasts it's beautiful i have another one ready to go but it's still original like thick and it'll be that i have to apply a lot more pressure basically that's all okay so we've got this a bit thinner and then i'm simply going to put myself a couple of grooves in to identify and get the glaze to work some magic because it has a little groove to sit in it gets darker so we've got that there and that identifies we're going to do a bit of my carving i'm going to come down and i'm going to do another little bit of carb until i get to that point there and i'm going to echo the carving that i have there up there can you still see yeah i guess so that gives me enough decorative stuff on this to make me feel like it's uh you know i'm gonna show the glaze nicely but i just noticed there's still a little bit of that dent in the knob there so i'm gonna round that off just a touch and then if you really go slow let's see if i can get this to work okay go make myself a little spiral to catch that clay as well and uh that glaze water all right all the debris will fall off as it gets dry anyway okay so i'm just one bit i'm going to trim the bottoms of these and maybe flute a bit down there but it's got enough already so we'll see okay the next step is to actually trim the underside of the actual pot so we'll take the lid off so these were sitting overnight not wrapped up at all okay you tilt it down see how we going now that's pretty good so really i don't need to trim much there because i i did most of it yesterday i just want to put a um i can get that just a touch more oh that's pretty good actually but okay so i'm just going to put the foot when i glaze my pieces i like to be able to tip them upside down into the glaze bucket because most of the glazing that i do where the double dipping and even triple dipping i don't do it to the bottom of the piece because the glazes will run anyway so i like to have a little overhang but i can stick my fingernails under when i'm doing something like this just to kind of hold the piece upside down in the bucket so that's all that is for it's a foot but it's got a function too um and then i'm just going to take out a little bit here see these trains are flying off because the piece is actually really never hard this time it's still a little tacky okay so basically just taking out a little bit we use this trimming tool this one is less easy to feel if the piece starts to get thin that's where like the narrow ones sometimes because you can actually feel if the clay is actually giving a little bit i only want to take a tiny bit out of here anyway remember this is a baking dish so you don't want to thin it it's just to identify the foot i like to i'm going to put pressure on here just to see well it's hard i can't even press down so there's some thickness there so i'm going to take a bit more out you have to be courageous enough to put that pressure on so you can see just how thin it is but it'd be nice to get a little bit more out there it's actually a nice because i might be able to do a very thin layer of glaze in this area so that i can glaze the center and just have the foot that isn't glazed and then basically it's uh done except for some fluting so we can do a couple of types of fluting but i'm going to do the type with a potato peeler and that i'm going to start each cut down oh that's not going to be good because it's catching the edges of this tool so we can't use that one so smooth it off again so i'm going to be back to my usual type of floating that i do all right so and that's the one where i've shown you before where i hold my finger and i move both hands at the same time here we go and then you can use a brush just to knock away the burr a little bit if you can end up with a you can rub it down like that if you want to you can use your hand like that too but that will give you a little nice texture underneath there to catch the glaze too and then the bottom area finally is i i just do this and feel till i start hitting the ribs that i did going down because i like to kind of give a definition to the edge there so that each mark isn't just randomly going down a different height on the piece it gives me that little band in the center there if i wanted to do something else but and then just feel your handles rub your finger use the brush a little bit to get rid of anything that might be rough where people are going to be touching and then just lift it out so it's heavier than a normal piece would be that i do because it's meant to go in the oven it's going to get some wear and tear on this piece and i've seen people baking in pieces in france actually old old baking pieces that had chips and all sorts of things out of them but they still functioned and um but it just showed that you know how to see these pieces do get a little bit of some banging around a little bit of debris on the lid there so knock that off but this is a good spacious lid it's got about a it's less than a quarter inch so maybe 3 8 3 16 of an inch wobble there and the glaze will fill some of that in so that's a nice baking dish and i have five of these so i'll show them at the end of the video hi this is just a quick snippet um i make kiln fillers as i've talked about in my kiln unloadings uh you need something that will you know somebody will buy something for a few dollars that basically is quick to make and you know will help you make your kill more economical to fire because a few of these will actually pay for the firing and so there you go i'm going to show you the actual how i make these little trivets for wine glasses or coffee mugs whatever um they're not that hard to make you just take a tiny bit of clay a quarter of a pound maybe that's even less than a quarter of a pound i never measure the clay when i make these because basically um they're just like i said kilt it was and so if i'm selling a wine glass or a coffee mug people will sometimes buy it as a tribute to sort of sit on the side of the couch or on a table and you can actually um just stop you get those little rings basically so basically just make sure you don't make it too thin compress the clay to the center do that and then you basically put your finger underneath a touch and just open it up make sure it doesn't get too dry and you can make an inner ring there so you've got a place where the side of the coffee mug will sit against and it won't slide then and that's it so it's a very quick i sell these at six dollars it's a steal and people buy them to put drop their keys onto in the front door i've had somebody say they just use it for olive pits at the table um so it's actually just got multi uses but it's perfect for a coffee mug or a wine glass to sit inside there so and that's it i'm gonna make 48 of these right now just so i've got them to slot and you stack them three four high in the kiln if you've got a bigger space or you can just have one slide underneath a bowl and all that so it really makes it and if you sell you know half a dozen of these you just paid for your kill firing so all right oh [Music] [Music] hmm [Music]

Channel: Vaughan Smith

Views: 29,330

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Id: ljhKqJe8Oeg

Length: 52min 10sec (3130 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021